Browned Butter Chocolate Chunk Muffins

Sunday morning saw me up at far, far earlier than I would have hoped – For some unknown and no doubt, evil reason – Miss thing’s team had decided that we needed to be up, dressed and presentable (and in Miss Thing’s case pretty-fied) by 8:30 for team pictures. On a Sunday. Did I mention it was evil? Oh – and I’d been up until 3:00 am the night before. Special, no? At any rate, when I came back from the hour long photoshoot, plus the obligatory hour or so of socializing and team bonding for the giggle of girls, I had to try and come up with something to make that I could bring to Mabon.

Initially I’d planned to make some sort of seasonal fruit dish with fruit from my recent FFTY box – but Miss Thing begged and begged and begged for something with chocolate in it – Brownies or Chocolate Cake or some such thing – to which I said no, but we finally managed to agree on Chocolate Chunk Muffins. Of course, I couldn’t let it go at just that. A recent post on Local Lemons for a Quick Bread that used Brown Butter had been kicking around in my head for a while, inspiring me and getting me thinking about ways that I could incorporate brown butter in to baked goods – and these muffins seemed like a good time to try it out.

And hoo-boy, was it ever a good idea. The Browned Butter added an interesting, carmel-y, nutty flavor. It was subtle, but unmistakable, and definitely something I want to try experimenting with more. It took a simple muffin recipe and made it special. The muffins ended up being used as part of the Circle for the Cakes portion – and I received many compliments on them. I hadn’t been paying much attention to things lately – the busy-ness has eaten my attention span, so I didn’t realize that we were currently in a Mercury Retrograde (although I’m totally not surprised) so things became a little snarled around circle. First one of my sisters ended up having vehicular issues and needed a ride. Then on Friday, I also developed vehicular issues. Don’t worry – everything is fine – although, vaguely humorous aside… we lost our power steering after watching District Nine on Friday. We hadn’t done anything different or unusual – we just got back in to the car after the movie and it wasn’t working. We managed to get home, and only drove sparingly over the weekend. On Monday I took it to the dealership and was told that somehow, we’d lost a belt. No damage that they could see – no reason for the missing belt was evident, no belt was left behind in the parking spot (that we saw) on Friday… the belt just got up and walked off, I guess.

Obviously, with no power steering, and no real idea of what was wrong with the steering, I didn’t want to chance driving very far – when I mentioned to the sister who was hosting the ritual that I was having transportation issues, among other things that were floating around the group – we ended up making a last-minute venue change for Mabon. To my house. Wooopsy! (I volunteered… and yes, I know I’m certifiable. It’s cool.) So directly after making these muffins, Mr. Man, Miss Thing and I started running around, raking up the worst of the debris that accumulates around a lived-in house, and did some light cleaning in preparation.It all worked out, and I think that everyone had a good time and oh yeah, muffins – they enjoyed the muffins.

I was a little short on time while I was making these – and one thing that I learned would be that next time I will brown the butter a few hours (or even a day or two) before I actually need it – because it was a teeny bit of a bottleneck. If you’re like me and working under a little bit of a time crunch – I found that it helped to pour the butter in to a wide, shallow dish (such as a plate) to increase the surface area exposure, and then place the butter in to the freezer for a few minutes. I still had a couple of small liquidy spots, but it really helped a great deal, and got me moving again. Initially I was planning on transporting the muffins, so I used paper liners – but that was simply a matter of convenience for transport – if I’d been making them for staying home, I’d have probably greased the muffin tins instead.

Ingredients:

12 tbs Butter

1½ cups Sugar

5 eggs

1 cup Milk

4 cups Flour

2 tbs Baking Powder

1 tsp Kosher Salt

8 oz Bittersweet Chocolate; coarsely chopped in to chunks

Method:

In a small saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat until butter develops a nutty smell and turns a golden brown in color (there will be browned solid bits floating around in it – which is good)

Remove the butter from heat and transfer to a bowl or dish.

Place the browned butter in to the refrigerator (or freezer if in a hurry) to re-solidify (These steps can be done several hours to several days beforehand)

Preheat the oven to 375° and grease (or line with paper) 2 muffin tins

In a small bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and kosher salt

In a separate bowl, lightly whisk together the milk and eggs

Cream together the browned butter and sugar until well combined

Alternate between the liquid ingredients and the flour mixture until combined

Stir in Chocolate pieces

Spoon in to muffin tins and bake for 20 minutes, or until golden and toothpick inserted in to center of a muffin comes out clean